Vision

We are creating a market for impact to drive philanthropy.

At the risk of minor simplification, businesses share a single mission: maximize profit. It follows that investors can judge performance with a single metric: risk-adjusted rate of return. Financial audits provide investors what they need to know about this metric. Nonprofits, by contrast, share no single mission. Each adopts its own.

Some educate learning-disabled students, fight bullying or stanch political corruption. Still others seek to nourish marriage or love of baroque music. And so on. In a world of idiosyncratic missions, there can be no single metric by which to measure success. Financial audits don’t capture whether the nonprofit succeeds at its mission.

Enter ImpactMatters. This new organization conducts impact audits of nonprofits. This new type of audit answers key questions. Has the nonprofit set forth an actionable mission? Has the nonprofit identified outcomes that tightly reflect its mission? Of paramount importance: does the nonprofit use data correctly when analyzing performance? And does the nonprofit use data to improve delivery of its philanthropic services? Impact audits help donors decide where their money is best spent and help nonprofits identify what they are doing well and, yes, not-so-well. Impact audits, at scale, could transform the nonprofit sector by creating a market for impact that drives philanthropy.

Nonprofit Ratings

Several initiatives have attempted to solve this nonprofit rating problem, but approaches to date have either been too shallow (using administrative data only, for example) or too restrictive (eliminating many nonprofits and only recommending a few). Furthermore, and critically to our approach, nonprofit rating systems have been designed to serve the donor only. We envision an impact audit process that provides direct feedback to the organization, to help it improve.

ImpactMatters is catalyzing the impact audit space, conducting the first impact audits of nonprofits and developing standards and guidelines for others to replicate the impact audit process. If we are successful, we anticipate that other firms will shift into this industry and that an annual impact audit could become a de facto requirement for nonprofits. In addition, just as generally accepted accounting principles have improved practice over time, the Impact Audit Standard could improve practice across the nonprofit sector by creating new norms for effectiveness.

Business Model

Funders and nonprofits can also commission ImpactMatters to conduct an impact audit. The impact audit approach provides intensive, cost-efficient vetting for evidence of impact.

Through an impact audit, funders get assurance that their support will flow to evidence-based organizations, while keeping costs low and supporting a public good that improves decision-making for other donors.